Joseph Heller

Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

"They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."

"The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

"Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all."

The God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

"Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb! "

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

"Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."